NASA’s Planet-Hunting TESS Reveals Dazzling Night Sky - UNIVERSE

NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has released its most complete view of the starry sky to date, filling in gaps from previous observations. Nearly 6,000 colored dots scattered across the image show the locations of either confirmed or candidate exoplanets — worlds beyond our solar system — identified by the mission as of September 2025 at the end of TESS’s second extended mission.

“Over the last eight years, TESS has become a fire hose of exoplanet science,” said Rebekah Hounsell, a TESS associate project scientist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s helped us find planets of all different sizes, from tiny Mercury-like ones to those larger than Jupiter. Some of them are even in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be possible on the surface, an important factor in our search for life beyond Earth.”

The TESS mission scans a wide swath of the sky, called a sector, for about a month at a time using its four cameras. These long stares allow the spacecraft to track the brightness changes of tens of thousands of stars, looking for variations in their light that might come from orbiting planets.

Researchers assembled an all-sky mosaic made of 96 sectors observed between April 2018, when TESS began its work, and September 2025.

This view of the whole sky was constructed from 96 TESS sectors. By the end of September 2025, when the last image of this mosaic was captured, TESS had discovered 679 exoplanets (blue dots) and 5,165 candidates (orange dots). The glowing arc running through the center is the plane of the Milky Way. The Large Magellanic Cloud can be seen along the bottom edge just left of center. Black areas within the oval indicate regions TESS has not yet imaged.

NASA/MIT/TESS and Veselin Kostov (University of Maryland College Park)

The blue dots in the image mark the locations of nearly 700 confirmed planets, as of September 9. This menagerie includes worlds that may be covered by volcanoes, are being destroyed by their stars, or orbit two stars — experiencing double sunrises and sunsets each day. The orange dots represent more than 5,000 candidate planets that are awaiting verification.

To date, scientists have confirmed over 6,270 exoplanets using missions like TESS, NASA’s retired Kepler Space Telescope, and other facilities.

Also captured in the mosaic is the bright plane of our Milky Way galaxy, seen as a glowing arc through the center. The bright white ovals in the lower left are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. These satellite galaxies are located 160,000 and 200,000 light-years away, respectively.

“The more we dig into the large TESS dataset, especially using automated algorithms, the more surprises we find,” said Allison Youngblood, the TESS project scientist at NASA Goddard. “In addition to planets, TESS has helped us study rivers of young stars, observe dynamic galactic behavior, and monitor asteroids near Earth. As TESS fills in more of the night sky, there’s no knowing what it might see next.”

You could discover the next exoplanet! Join the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project, and you’ll learn how to read light curves — plots of light data from distant stars — to find telltale signals from orbiting exoplanets.

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 

Source: NASA’s Planet-Hunting TESS Reveals Dazzling Night Sky - NASA Science  

Your Gut Is Secretly Reprogramming Your Appetite, And Scientists Just Found Out How

Have you ever craved a steak or a handful of nuts after a few days of eating mostly bread and pasta? It turns out that craving is not just willpower or habit, it is your gut talking directly to your brain, and a new study published in Science has finally mapped out exactly how that conversation happens.

The Hidden Alarm System Inside Your Gut

A team of researchers led by Director Suh Seong-Bae at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), working with scientists from Seoul National University and Ewha Womans University, has uncovered a previously unknown gut-brain signaling network that kicks in the moment your body runs low on protein.

The key player is a small peptide hormone called CNMamide (CNMa). When your diet lacks sufficient essential amino acids,  the building blocks of protein that your body cannot produce on its own,  specialized cells lining the gut ramp up production of CNMa. What happens next is surprisingly sophisticated.

Two Pathways, One Goal: Get You to Eat Protein

The researchers discovered that CNMa triggers not one but two complementary communication routes between the gut and the brain:

The fast lane (neural): CNMa activates enteric neurons in the gut wall, which relay a rapid signal through a direct gut-brain neural pathway. The brain gets the message almost immediately: find protein.

The slow lane (hormonal): CNMa also enters the bloodstream and travels as a circulating hormone, reaching the brain more gradually and sustaining the drive to seek out essential amino acids over a longer period.

Together, these two routes work like a two-stage alarm,  a quick alert followed by a persistent reminder,  ensuring the body doesn’t just notice a protein deficit but actually acts on it.

It Doesn’t Just Make You Hungrier,  It Changes What You Want

Perhaps the most striking finding is that this system doesn’t simply increase overall appetite. Instead, it reshapes cravings in a very targeted way. CNMa suppresses the activity of sugar-sensing neurons in the brain (called DH44 neurons), effectively turning down the appeal of carbohydrates while turning up the desire for protein-rich foods.

In other words, when you are protein-deficient, your brain is being actively nudged away from the cookie jar and toward the chicken breast. This is not a vague feeling,  it is a neurochemical redirect.

The Microbiome Is Also in on It

The study added another layer of complexity: gut bacteria appear to modulate the whole process. Fruit flies without their normal gut microbiome showed much stronger activation of amino acid-seeking brain circuits, suggesting that a healthy microbiome helps keep protein appetite in check by contributing to nutrient availability. Disrupt the microbiome, and the hunger signal gets louder.

It Works in Mammals Too

The experiments were conducted primarily in Drosophila fruit flies, a classic model for studying neural circuits. But the team also tested mice, and found the same protein-seeking behavior when animals were deprived of essential amino acids.

Interestingly, even mice that lacked FGF21,  a hormone long thought to be the main driver of protein appetite in mammals,  still showed strong amino acid-seeking behavior. This suggests that the body has backup systems for nutrient sensing that science has not yet fully catalogued.

Why This Matters Beyond the Lab

Understanding how the gut and brain communicate about specific nutrients has real implications for how we think about obesity, metabolic disease, and eating disorders. Most appetite-suppressing drugs currently on the market work by interfering with gut hormone signaling in a fairly blunt way. This research reveals a much more precise layer of the system,  one that targets specific macronutrient hunger rather than hunger in general.

As Director Suh put it, the gut is not just a digestive organ. It is an active sensory system that continuously monitors the body’s nutritional state and issues behavioral instructions accordingly. Knowing the exact molecular signals involved opens the door to far more targeted therapies.

Next time you find yourself inexplicably craving eggs or cheese, you might just be listening to your gut, quite literally. 

Original paper: Boram Kim et al., “Complex interplay of neuronal and hormonal gut-brain responses to essential amino acid deficit,” Science, 2026. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv3355 

Source: Your Gut Is Secretly Reprogramming Your Appetite, And Scientists Just Found Out How – Scents of Science   

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NASA’s Webb Reveals Black Hole That Formed Before Its Galaxy - UNIVERSE

Which comes first, the galaxy or the black hole? We don’t know, but scientists have long thought it could be the galaxy: Large stars within an existing galaxy consume their fuel and collapse to form black holes, which can gobble up surrounding material and merge over time to form more massive entities.

But it’s hard to figure out how black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, thousands of which have now been detected in the early universe, could have grown so quickly from such small seeds.  

Now, researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected clear evidence that some supermassive black holes were enormous from the beginning, forming without a stellar collapse phase, and without a significantly more massive host galaxy to feed them.

“This is a remarkable finding,” said Roberto Maiolino of University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, co-author of studies published in Nature and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “It’s a paradigm shift, a total revisiting of the classical scenarios of how black holes form and grow.”

Little Red Dot QSO1

The team’s conclusion is based on detailed observations of Abell2744-QSO1 (QSO1), a prototypical Little Red Dot that existed just 700 million years after the big bang.

Although QSO1 is only 1,300 light-years across, and its light has been traveling for more than 13 billion years, it is easier to study than most other Little Red Dots because it is gravitationally lensed by galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (Pandora’s Cluster). QSO1 is both magnified and triply imaged, appearing in three different locations in the sky.

Initial studies of QSO1 revealed compelling evidence that it may be little more than a cloud of glowing hydrogen and helium gas circling a supermassive black hole estimated at 40 million times the mass of the Sun. But as with other early black holes discovered by Webb, there was uncertainty about whether it really was that massive.

“Before now, all of the mass measurements of black holes in the early universe have been indirect, based on assumptions from what we know about them in the local universe. We didn’t know if those assumptions really apply to the distant universe,” said co-author Francesco D’Eugenio, also of the University of Cambridge.

Image: Little Red Dot Abell2744-QSO1 (NIRCam Image)

An image from NIRCam on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows Little Red Dot Abell2744-QSO1, magnified and triply imaged by galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (Pandora’s Cluster).

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Lukas Furtak (Ben-Gurion University); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Mapping gas composition, velocity

The team recognized that if QSO1’s black hole is as massive as it looks, they should be able to use the integral field unit (IFU) on Webb’s NIRSpec (Near Infrared Spectrograph) to trace the effects of its gravity on the gas swirling around it, while also mapping the distribution of various elements in the gas.

Cambridge graduate student Ignas Juodžbalis and Cosimo Marconcini of the University of Florence, lead authors on one of the studies, used the IFU observations to map motions of hydrogen gas surrounding the black hole. When they plotted the rotation velocity as a function of distance from the center, they found that the gas has Keplerian motion: It orbits a central point in the same way that planets in our solar system orbit the Sun.

“This is important because it tells us that most of the mass of QSO1 is concentrated in the black hole at the center,” said Juodžbalis. “If the mass were more distributed, as it would be if there were a lot of stars, the gas would not have this perfect Keplerian rotation.”

Since Keplerian motion is governed by simple laws of gravity, the team was able to use the gas velocity measurements to calculate the black hole mass directly, a feat that had not previously been possible.

They found that not only is the black hole immense — roughly 50 million solar masses — it makes up, at minimum, an astonishing two-thirds of QSO1’s total mass. This proportion is thousands of times greater than in nearby galaxies, where supermassive black holes make up only a tiny fraction of the host galaxy’s total mass.

The IFU composition maps supported these results, showing that the gas throughout QSO1 is almost entirely hydrogen and helium, with very little of the heavier elements like oxygen that would be expected in a galaxy rich with stars and stellar debris. With a metallicity less than 0.5% of the Sun, QSO1 is one of the most pristine galactic environments ever measured.

“This is a phenomenal result,” said Maiolino. “It is the first direct measurement of a black hole mass within the first billion years after the big bang, and it is consistent with the previous measurements.” The team thinks this is a good sign that the assumptions used for indirect mass measurements are valid and the masses of other black holes in the early universe have not been overestimated.  

Supermassive black hole origins

The outsized mass of QSO1 relative to its host galaxy suggests that it can’t have formed gradually from much smaller, stellar-mass black holes merging and feeding. “It seems that we have found a black hole that does not have a substantial host galaxy and that has predated stellar processes,” said Juodžbalis. “This is very exciting because it is evidence for primordial black holes or direct collapse black holes, which have been theorized but not confirmed.”

Whether QSO1’s black hole evolved from a “heavy seed” that formed within the first second of the big bang or somewhat later from the collapse of a giant cloud of gas, it was almost certainly born big, and may be in the early stages of building a galaxy around it.

The team thinks that Little Red Dots like QSO1 cannot have been rare in the early universe, and is in the process of analyzing similar objects to find out whether supermassive black holes actually do predate the galaxies where they currently reside.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/webb 

Source: NASA’s Webb Reveals Black Hole That Formed Before Its Galaxy - NASA Science

Ebola Is Back, What You Need to Know About the 2026 Outbreak

A new Ebola outbreak is unfolding right now, and this one is different from the ones you may remember. On May 15, 2026, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) officially declared an outbreak in its northeastern Ituri Province. Within days, cases had crossed the border into Uganda’s capital Kampala. By May 17, the World Health Organization declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the highest level of global health alarm.

As of May 27, 2026, more than 1,200 suspected and confirmed cases and at least 264 deaths have been reported. The outbreak is still growing.

What Makes This Outbreak Different

Most people associate Ebola with the Zaire strain, the one responsible for the catastrophic 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic and the large 2018–2019 DRC outbreak. For that strain, there is an approved vaccine (rVSV-ZEBOV) and approved treatments. This outbreak is caused by a different species entirely: Bundibugyo virus.

Bundibugyo is rarer. This is only the third time it has been implicated in a known outbreak. It was first identified less than 20 years ago in western Uganda. And critically, as of today, there is no approved vaccine and no approved treatment for Bundibugyo. Scientists and international health agencies are urgently working to test candidate therapies, but nothing is licensed yet. This makes the current outbreak significantly more difficult to manage than previous ones.

The outbreak is also happening in a deeply challenging context: active armed conflict in eastern DRC, a large humanitarian crisis, heavy cross-border population movement, dense urban and semi-urban areas, and limited diagnostic capacity. PCR test kits specific to Bundibugyo are in short supply, which slows case confirmation and contact tracing, the two most critical tools for stopping any Ebola outbreak.

What Is Ebola, and How Does It Work?

Ebola disease is caused by a family of viruses called ebolaviruses, which are found naturally in sub-Saharan Africa. Fruit bats are believed to be the primary animal reservoir, the species that carries the virus without becoming ill. Occasionally, the virus “spills over” into humans, either through contact with an infected animal or its bodily fluids, and from there it can spread from person to person.

Once inside the human body, the virus attacks multiple organ systems simultaneously. It causes what is known as a viral hemorrhagic fever, though not all patients experience visible bleeding. The disease typically progresses in two phases:

Early “dry” phase: Fever, headache, severe fatigue, muscle aches, and sore throat. These symptoms are non-specific and easy to mistake for malaria, typhoid, or flu, which is part of what makes early detection so difficult.

Later “wet” phase: Vomiting, diarrhea, and in some cases internal or external bleeding. Patients can deteriorate rapidly at this stage. The average incubation period from exposure to symptoms is 8 to 10 days, though it can range from 2 to 21 days.

Crucially, a person is only contagious once symptoms appear. Ebola does not spread through the air. You cannot contract it by passing someone on the street or being in the same room as an infected person who is not yet symptomatic.

How Does It Spread?

Ebola spreads through direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of a symptomatic infected person, or with contaminated objects such as needles, bedding, or medical equipment. The most common transmission routes are:

·         Caring for a sick family member without protective equipment

·         Exposure in healthcare settings without proper infection control

·         Handling the body of someone who died from Ebola (funeral and burial practices are a significant transmission risk in affected communities)

·         Contact with infected animals, though this is rare

Healthcare workers and family caregivers carry the highest risk. The virus can also persist in the body of a survivor, particularly in semen, for weeks to months after recovery, which can lead to sexual transmission even after a person appears well.

What Is the Risk for People Outside DRC and Uganda?

For the vast majority of people in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, the current risk is very low. Ebola does not spread easily in settings with functioning healthcare infrastructure, running water, and robust infection control. The CDC currently rates the risk to the United States as low, though it has issued a Level 3 Travel Health Notice (avoid non-essential travel) for DRC and a Level 1 Notice (practice usual precautions) for Uganda.

Enhanced health screening is in place at airports for travelers arriving from affected regions. The US, EU, and other governments are coordinating with airlines and port-of-entry officials to identify and manage anyone who may have been exposed.

That said, the fact that cases have already appeared in Kampala, a major international hub, is a reminder that in a connected world, no outbreak stays local forever. Vigilance matters.

How to Protect Yourself

If you are not in an affected region: Stay informed through official sources (CDC, WHO). There is no need for alarm, but awareness is useful. Monitor travel advisories before any trip to Central or East Africa.

If you are traveling to DRC, Uganda, or surrounding areas:

·         Avoid contact with sick people and with anyone who has died from unknown causes

·         Do not handle or consume bushmeat (wild animals)

·         Avoid contact with bats and non-human primates

·         Wash hands frequently and thoroughly with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer

·         Seek medical attention immediately if you develop fever, fatigue, or other symptoms within 21 days of potential exposure, and inform healthcare workers of your travel history

If you are a healthcare worker or aid worker in an affected area:

·         Use full personal protective equipment (PPE) at all times with suspected or confirmed cases

·         Follow strict infection prevention and control (IPC) protocols

·         Ensure safe and dignified burial practices

·         Participate in daily contact monitoring and report symptoms immediately

How Is the Outbreak Being Managed?

Without an approved vaccine or treatment for Bundibugyo, the response relies entirely on proven public health fundamentals: find cases early, isolate them quickly, trace every contact, and protect healthcare workers. WHO, MSF (Doctors Without Borders), the CDC, and many other international partners are on the ground scaling up these efforts.

Contacts of confirmed cases are monitored daily for 21 days, the maximum incubation period. Anyone who develops symptoms is immediately quarantined. Safe burial teams are managing the high-risk process of handling the deceased. Community engagement is a critical part of the response: outbreaks are controlled fastest when local communities understand what is happening and trust the response.

Clinical trials for candidate Bundibugyo-specific treatments and a ring vaccination strategy using available experimental vaccines are being explored. History gives some reason for optimism: every previous Ebola outbreak, including some that seemed uncontrollable at first, has eventually been brought to an end.

A Final Word

Ebola is frightening, partly because of its severity and partly because of how it has been portrayed in popular culture. But it is not a mystery virus, and the science of how to stop it is well understood. What makes outbreaks like this one so difficult is not the biology, it is the context: war, poverty, displacement, and under-resourced health systems.

The best thing most of us can do right now is stay informed, trust verified sources, and support the organisations working on the ground. The worst outcomes in outbreak history have always been driven by fear, misinformation, and delayed response. The best outcomes have come from transparency, coordination, and community trust.

This is a serious situation. It is also one the world knows how to face.

Key sources and further reading:

·         WHO situation page: Ebola Outbreak DRC 2026

·         CDC outbreak summary: CDC Ebola Situation Summary

·         CDC FAQ on Bundibugyo: Ebola and Bundibugyo Virus FAQ

·         MSF on the Bundibugyo challenge: Why This Outbreak Is Different

·         ECDC rapid risk assessment: ECDC Risk Assessment

Source: Ebola Is Back, What You Need to Know About the 2026 Outbreak – Scents of Science

Southeast Asia's changing landscape is fueling a deadly air crisis that costs billions - Earth - Environment

Annual PM_2·5-related and O₃-related excess deaths due to LULCCs in the 2001–18 period in Southeast Asia. Credit: The Lancet Planetary Health (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.lanplh.2026.101457

Changes in land-use across Southeast Asia over the past 15 years are worsening air quality and contributing to thousands of excess deaths each year, according to a study led by researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore).

The study estimates that land-use and land-cover changes in the region were linked to about 13,000 excess deaths in 2018 alone, which represent the extra number of people who died compared to what would be expected in a year without the land-use and land-cover changes. This is alongside economic losses of about US$7.8 billion due to the health impacts of worsening air pollution.

Published in the May issue of The Lancet Planetary Health, the study was led by scientists from NTU Singapore's Center for Climate Change and Environmental Health (CCEH), in collaboration with researchers from NTU's Asian School of the Environment (ASE), Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) and Nanyang Business School, as well as from Macao Polytechnic University and City University of Macau.

The findings highlight how land development decisions, including deforestation, agricultural expansion and urban growth, can have far-reaching consequences for air quality, public health and economic productivity across Southeast Asia.

Principal investigator of the study, ASE's and LKCMedicine's Professor Steve Yim, Director of CCEH, said, "Land-use change is often discussed in terms of climate or economic development, but its impacts on air quality and public health are less well understood."

Prof Yim, who specializes in environmental health, added, "Our study shows that land-use changes can significantly worsen air pollution in Southeast Asia, leading to substantial health impacts and economic losses."

Forest loss and damage are major contributors to air pollution impacts

Using computer models, the researchers analyzed land-use changes across Southeast Asia between 2001 and 2018, including forest degradation and deforestation, cropland expansion, reforestation and urban development.

The team examined how these changes affected levels of two major air pollutants linked to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases: fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) and ground-level ozone (O₃).

The results showed that the estimated 13,000 excess deaths in 2018 were linked to land-use and land-cover changes. Forest degradation and deforestation were the largest contributors, accounting for nearly 30% of these deaths.

Co-first author of the study, Dr. Tingting Fang, research fellow at NTU, said, "Forests are one of nature's most effective air filters. When forests are removed or degraded, our atmosphere loses an important natural sink that helps remove pollutants, allowing pollutants like PM_2.5 and O₃ to build up more easily. As a result, forest loss can significantly worsen air quality and increase health risks for millions of people across Southeast Asia."

Changing landscape carries a hefty price tag for Southeast Asia

The health impacts linked to land-use changes also carry substantial economic costs. Using Value of Statistical Life (VSL) and Cost-of-Illness (COI) methods—widely used approaches for estimating the economic impact of pollution-related deaths—the study found that in 2018 alone, land-use change-related air pollution resulted in US$7.8 billion in economic losses across Southeast Asia.

This is equivalent to about 0.1% of the region's GDP, including US$1.07 billion in productivity losses and US$34 million in health care costs.

Among Southeast Asian countries, Indonesia and Thailand experienced the largest economic burdens.

The researchers found that the largest increases in excess deaths occurred in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, reflecting both extensive land-use changes and their impacts on air pollution. Major health impacts were concentrated in densely populated regions such as Java, the Mekong River Delta, and the Red River Delta.

The study also found that more than 60% of the damage was driven by biogeophysical effects, meaning that land-use changes altered the local climate in ways that made air pollution more harmful to human health.

Supporting better land management and environmental policy

The researchers say the findings highlight the need to consider air quality and public health impacts when planning land-use policies and development strategies across Southeast Asia.

The study also suggests that forest conservation and more sustainable land management could deliver multiple benefits, including improved air quality, better public health outcomes and stronger economic resilience.

Prof Yim said, "Our findings show that better land management can deliver important co-benefits. Protecting forests and carefully planning land development can help improve air quality, safeguard public health and support sustainable economic development across the region." 

Provided by Nanyang Technological University  

by Nanyang Technological University

edited by Lisa Lock, reviewed by Robert Egan 

Source: Southeast Asia's changing landscape is fueling a deadly air crisis that costs billions